Tag Archives: Books

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to The Phoenix Projectduring my commute to and from work. Having finished it today, I decided to jot down some of my thoughts and share them with you.

The first thing I will warn you about is that if you have already read The Goal and understand how it can be applied to IT then you are not going to find any new, eye-opening concepts in this book. The plot follows a middle manager that finds himself being promoted to the head of a struggling department. Through determination and coaching from a elusive and wise mentor, he learns to identify and control work along with how to align it with the companies needs to become successful and rise to the top of their market. For the record, that is the plot for both books. I identified the similarities between the books within the first couple of chapters, but was amused when the main character’s mentor began to quote and reference The Goal while explaining that work is work and IT is no different from a manufacturing plant.

With my main criticism out of the way, I found the story to be a fairly realistic look at IT functions within an company. Misunderstandings and unreasonable demands result in repeated disasters and a generally oppressed and depressed atmosphere. I dare say the stage was set so well that I could not only draw parallels from my experience but was starting to have actual sympathy for the characters because I could see what was coming.

Overall, I think this is a good book for IT staff, managers, and all executives to read and gain an understanding of the processes that help work flow. For the IT staff in the trenches, the purpose of reading this book should be gain an understanding of why processes may need to change and to help acknowledge that their managers need help not resistance. The executive’s take away should be to identify things that were done poorly by the executives and the board in the book so that they can recognize and correct similar issues within their organization. For the last group I recommend this book to, I suspect the take away would be a number of ideas regarding how to implement changes and structure work for their teams and that there is some hope if you can get those above you and below you to listen to reason.

I would recommend this book over The Goal for use in IT organizations simply because it makes it easier to see how the concepts apply to IT while making a point of addressing the common responses from IT personnel. I believe this was the motivation of the authors and, if I am correct, they succeeded.